


Fighting

by emilyenrose



Series: Memory [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Nightmares, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Tentacles, Timestamp, trash-adjacent fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-16
Updated: 2014-10-16
Packaged: 2018-02-21 10:27:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2464898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emilyenrose/pseuds/emilyenrose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James can’t sleep if there’s someone touching him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fighting

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Борьба (Fighting by emilyenrose)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3270122) by [Miarra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miarra/pseuds/Miarra)
  * Translation into Magyar available: [Harc](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11654421) by [AritaReal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AritaReal/pseuds/AritaReal)



> This is a timestamp ficlet set a little while after the end of [Memory.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2379881)

James startles awake in the dark breathing hard and cannot make his muscles unlock.

Steve shifts next to him. James has woken him up. “Bad dream?”

"Mm," says James.

Steve’s quiet. Then he says, “I get them too.”

It’s in the dark that they have these kinds of conversations. They’re quiet. Serious. It’s in the dark that James steels himself to ask the questions that prey most on him - questions, usually, about the words in the notebook that contain what’s left of the man he should have been. And it’s in the dark, too, that Steve makes these small confessions, letting them out with twinned pride and nervousness - never a coward, Steve, never that, but he does hate to be pitied. Maybe it’s James he tells because James is in no position to pity anyone.

"I get," says Steve - once he gets started he makes himself finish, always, no matter what - "the war, but also - fights from before that. And after. Loki in Austria in ‘44. Nonsense if I stopped to think." He stops. Then he goes on. "I guess for you it’s them, huh."

There’s only ever one thing either of them means by  _them_.

James lets out an ugly bark of a laugh. The mattress moves. Steve’s gone stiff. They’re not touching. James can’t sleep if there’s someone touching him.

"Sorry," says James. "Didn’t mean to -" laugh. He never does. (And yet laughter comes to him, sometimes, out of nowhere: he’s sat in his apartment bent double over his - his other self’s - notebook, laughing and laughing, horribly unable to stop.)

This is the dream: James is lying in bed - a bed like this one, a real bed, with blankets and pillows - and the room is in shadow. Slowly it comes to him that the shadow is alive; that something in it is watching him. He does not move from the bed, because it is already all around him. He lies there. He watches. He waits. Soon the shadow reaches out for him. It pulls the blankets from him with invisible fingers. He is naked. He realizes suddenly that he should have tried already to run away, and tries to rise. Dark coils have already reached out for him: they catch at his ankles, calves, thighs, belly, wrists and shoulders; a strong thick one for his left arm, of course. They do not feel like anything. They might be made of smoke, and they hold him there like iron.

James fights.

This isn’t the nightmare.

He thrashes in the grip of the shadow thing, and he cannot get free; he cannot get free; he is aware that it is watching him. He should have fought before. He should have tried to run. (In this dream, before, he has tried to run: it did not change the outcome.) But it holds him there and it watches him, and he struggles with tears running down his face, and a voice in his head says: stop fighting.

He knows it is the shadow’s voice, and he does not know how it is inside his head.

This is also not the nightmare.

Stop fighting, it tells him again, and more coils unfold from the dark around the bed to hold him. He is wrapped up in them: encased: he is in a coffin made of smoke. Darkness falls over his eyes. He yells for help, but his voice sounds muffled to his own ears. Stop fighting, he hears again, from everywhere and nowhere, and then -

then it loses patience with him, and it goes inside him: shadow strong as steel forces his mouth open and slides inside: shadow tendrils curl around his upper thighs, his cock, back behind his balls. It’s crazy: it’s humiliating. Stop stop stop _stop fighting_ , the voice whispers, and -

(this is still not the nightmare)

James stops fighting.

He goes limp in the grip of the awful thing holding him. And he can feel its terrible satisfaction. It begins sliding through everywhere inside him, threading its dark shapes through his veins and tangling them up with his nerves - touching every part of him until he’s -

The thing is that this isn’t, this isn’t, this isn’t the nightmare.

The nightmare is: it feels so  _good_.

It’s a sex dream, he guesses. It’s whatever someone like him has instead of sex dreams. James isn’t entirely sure what sex is meant to be like. He remembers kissing, both in the vague blotched memories of who he used to be and in the sharp unforgotten now, with Steve - but not that. Not sex.

He isn’t sure what it’s meant to be like, no. But he’s pretty sure it’s not meant to be like that.

He tells the dream to Steve, haltingly, most of it.

It seems fair. Steve tells James his. Steve wants to know: that’s what he means by  _I guess for you it’s them_. James trusts Steve: it’s a conscious effort some (most) days, but it’s been getting easier. The first time James slept in the same bed as Steve he dozed in twenty-minute catnaps. These days he occasionally makes it through a good three or four hours.

In the back of James’s mind is the thought that maybe this is the thing that will make Steve see that he’s made a mistake, with James. With whatever he thinks he’s doing with James. And if it does. Well. That seems fair, too. Steve’s got a right to know.

Steve doesn’t say anything at first. James lies still.

Finally Steve says, “Hey.”

It means  _look at me._ James rolls over. Steve’s eyes are catching the faint gleam of light from the street lamp. There’s a pillow crease on his cheek. His expression is thoughtful, and then - James’s night vision is better than most - firms into stubborn.

"I’m going to try something," he says.

Not  _can I try something_. James likes that about Steve. Might be the thing he likes most.

Steve reaches out and catches James’s right wrist with his left hand. James looks at him without expression. It doesn’t seem like much of a thing to try. Steve’s forehead creases, and he moves his hand so his fingers are tangled with James’s. James lifts an eyebrow at him without meaning to. Sometimes that happens, with people he likes; his face knows more about how to say things than he does.

Steve laughs at the expression. Tangles his other hand with James’s metal left - so, what, they’re holding hands? is that what Steve wants? - and then very deliberately pushes, bringing the full force of his terrible soldier’s strength to bear. James’s hands are forced down flat on either side of his head, Steve’s fingers twined with his. Steve swings his leg over James’ hip. Has him pinned. Looks down at him through the shadows.

James’s breath catches.

"Like that," says Steve. "Is that it?"

James stares up at him, thinking - thinking -

"Can you -" he says. He feels Steve’s hands start to relax; he grips tight.  _No don’t please._

"What is it?"

"Can you kiss me," says James.

Steve smiles crookedly down at him. “Yeah.”

They kiss; James closes his eyes. Lips and tongue, and he can still feel Steve’s strength on him, holding him steady. When the kiss breaks Steve drops his head into the crook of James’ neck. “I got you,” he says. His hands keep James’s pressed into the bed. “You’re safe. I’ve  _got_  you.”

"Fuck," says James, feeling -  _drunk_  swims up from somewhere in his mind, and he doesn’t stop to think where. He keeps his eyes closed. He hangs on to Steve.

For a tiny space, held safe in the dark with Steve’s breath against his neck, he stops fighting.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr.](http://emilyenrose.tumblr.com)


End file.
